You can do so directly using the GSL, and there's always been a trickle of stuff there, it's just not a very attractive thing to publish under.
What you can't do is what PF did, launch a 'new' cloned game and support it, whatever happens to the original.
Exactly. Although GSL isn't particularly suitable because it isn't clear you can continue to use that license if and when WotC EOLs it. You're best off using the OGL, it just means you have to maintain the "no mention of 4e" charade. Actually even that isn't absolute, as a factual statement along the lines of "this will work with 4e D&D" shouldn't run afoul of anything. GSL itself wasn't really so bad, it is just 4e overall wasn't conducive to 3PP products. Its not bad for adventure writers, except they rarely 'grokked' the game, but without access to DDI...
Strictly game-design aesthetics or 'elegance' in my case. Controller just sticks out as the odd Role out. It doesn't have a clear purpose, is the most dispensable role, but has the most dramatic and problematic form of support - powers that are just better than everyone else's. It's ugly.
As an avid wargamer and thus student of tactics and strategy I can say that 'control' (not a term of art, but it will do) is the sin qua non of military theory and practice. Get inside the enemy's decision loop and force him to react, you WILL win. So the FUNCTION is elemental to tactics, and represents the primary utility of mines, artillery, and even automatic weapons to a large extent (area denial, much like an AoE effect in 4e). Thus there's nothing at all 'odd out' about the role, whomever devised these roles was clearly well-versed in military science, as well as D&D. I don't really agree that it is the 'most dispensible' role either. Leader IMHO is often rather superfluous, being basically a trade-off of fixing damage instead of inflicting more. As for its form of support, what exactly is wrong with this? I mean people have spilled oceans of virtual ink on "4e characters are all the same whaaaaaaaa!!!!!!" and now we hear that some of them are different, and that's bad too! I think its actually fairly genius in that they're different in the one dimension that doesn't really break resource management. They still expend resources at the same rates as every other type of character, and need to 'recharge' on the same schedule. Yet they get to work a bit differently. I think its interesting. Its not impossible that it could be problematic, and you may want to argue that it creates some constraints on overall 4e design, but I suspect those constraints aren't strong enough to make a huge difference.
And, if we're talking 'mutations,' it gets in the way of one hypothetical mutated trait I'd find particularly enticing: consolidating powers by Source.
Agreed. If you are going to have source-based power lists (and I do have them in my hack, at least notionally, not much has really been done on fleshing out those lists so far) then you have balance the powers, and then you'll want to move the control element into something else. Personally I didn't want to have it be reduced to one single simple element that all wizards have (like say "impose the slowed condition on all targets UEOYNT" or some such). Instead I've worked on attaching it to implement masteries. So you get a choice of what SORT of controller to be. Orbs cloud the mind; staves daze, knockback, and prone; wands tend to slow, restrain, etc. My guess is tomes will just continue to enhance summons on the theory that a better summons IS a better form of control. That's probably enough masteries, though no doubt one or two more could be devised.
Champions! went full-on 'universal' in it's 1989 4th edition (coincidentally enough), which is also when the generic rules were broken out into the Hero System Rulebook, yes.
Yeah, we only played in the 80's when it was, I think, Champions! 2. Not a bad game, if you didn't try to be too much of a munchkin about it. I seem to recall the biggest weakness was in terms of putting constraints on your powers. For instance I recall making a 'wizard' character who's powers were all embued into his staff. Because it was a 'gadget' and in theory could be lost, and had limited charges per day, it was like 8x more powerful than basic inherent powers. I did get some blowback on that character... lol.
4e's balance is pretty impressive, for an edition of D&D, sure. I'm not sure a power-build system would hurt it, if it otherwise stuck with AEDU. I've never quite reverse-engineered or otherwise sussed how 4e powers were designed, anyway. They often seem quite arbitrary, to me.
There have been some (now sadly extincted) attempts on the WotC boards. As with most similar things, you can generate a fairly basic point value that will produce reasonably consistent results on most existing powers. However as soon as you go the other way and devise powers based on point values, all bets are off, you can create some stupidly nasty stuff that is just not expensive. Again, its all about synergy, or exploiting situational aspects of powers, and things like that. I don't think there's any 'system' to 4e power design, its literally eyeballs and playtest. And I would submit that they had minimal concerns about powers being too weak. As experience has shown, there's probably a good 25% of all powers that are just non-starters, and will only be taken by players who don't care or have entirely other concerns than effectiveness. Overall though it worked, most powers are at least serviceable and given the right thematics or simply a need to incorporate some specific effect they're worthwhile, if not 'sky blue'. They obviously did miss the boat in a few cases of course, and I suspect they also deliberately created a few 'signature powers' that they knew would be superior choices. TS clearly falls into that category, being effectively a ranger class feature.
